On a big-sky plateau on the eastern slope of the Cascades, a 10-acre parcel of land has been trashed by illicit pot farmers. Abandoned equipment rusts and jugs of chemicals molder.

Marijuana legalization wasn’t supposed to look like this.

Five years into its experiment with legal, regulated cannabis, Washington state is finding that pot still attracts criminals.

Okanogan County Chief Criminal Deputy Steve Brown helped raid this farm last fall. What was striking, he says, is how brazen it was: located just off the road, within sight of neighbors. Before legalization, he says, an operation like this would at least have been hidden up in the hills.

“Now it’s just out in the open, because everywhere you drive in the county you see the fencing, and everybody just assumes it must be just another legal grow going on.”

This particular grow was just a few hundred feet from licensed, state-regulated pot farms. Brown recalls how…